Once upon a time, my mother bought me a shirt. More often than not, I hate clothes bought for me and this shirt was not different. For no particular reason I resisted wearing that shirt. May be it was old-fashioned or may be I did not like the colour; something about that Shirt did not sit right with me.

For years my mother kept asking me to wear that shirt. With every reminder, I hated that shirt more. My mother is a persistent woman but finally she gave up and stopped asking about the shirt. Here is what happened after that

One fine day, I ended up in a situation where I could not find any clean/ ironed shirt to wear (yes that happens to me) and as fate would have it, the only shirt available to me was the one my mother gave me. I gathered the courage, put on the shirt and went on with my day.

‘Hey, nice shirt!’

‘Why don’t you wear such shirts more, they look good on you’

‘This definitely does not look like your shopping. Looks good’

Some of the things I got to hear that day. Not sure all of them were compliments but I will live with that.

I came back home and tried my level best to figure out why I hated that shirt. The best I could come up with was this –

‘I was a young rebellious kid who did not like the fact that his mom bought him something without asking him first’

Now replace the shirt with technology and my mother with any change/ transformation managers in your organisation. You will get the same situation

• You will mostly hate the technology procured by the organisation
• You will hate it more as a result of the ‘adoption stats’ and constant reminders to ‘use the technology’
• You will one day be forced to use the technology and if everything is right, you will actually find it beneficial.
• You (and the change manager) will be wondering why you hated the technology so much to begin with.

I think we as change managers need to ditch the traditional adoption measures and focus on creating situations where there is a reason or at least an excuse to adopt the technology. We also need to find ways to ensure that end-users feel that they bought the technology along with the organisation. It is a difficult thing to achieve but I think it is mission critical.

As humans, we have tendency to hate new things when those are forced on us. Asking ‘why you are not using it’ just adds oil to the fire. I am sure none of us want that. My mother knew that shirt will look good on me, she just could not find a way for me to try it on. In my case luck helped and I ended up wearing that shirt, I am not sure if organisations can depend on luck when it comes to technology adoption!